Speaking with host and Breitbart News Executive Chairman Stephen K. Bannon on Breitbart News Daily on SiriusXM Patriot Ch. 125, Breitbart Tech reporter Allum Bokhari discussed the private meeting between the GOP establishment and billionaire international tech leaders in order to try and stop Donald Trump, as well as Bokhari’s new story on the “progressive plutocrats” of Silicon Valley.
“It doesn’t surprise me at all that they’ve tried to gang up on Donald Trump — progressivism is sort of like a religion in Silicon Valley,” said Bokhari.
“I thought these guys were all capitalists. You’re telling me they’re all progressives?” asked Bannon in response.
“Well, they’re progressive in the sense that Donald Trump, as someone who disagrees with social progressivism — the agenda of diversity and immigration — really frightens them,” Bokhari explained. “Especially with the H1B Visa program which Trump has spoken out against and which Marco Rubio supports. That’s quite vital for many Silicon Valley companies. But it’s not just as self-interested thing. They really believe this progressive stuff. Mark Zuckerberg just a few weeks ago said he thinks the US should follow Germany’s lead on immigration.”
On the question of whether the tech CEOs are motivated by ideology versus a pragmatic concern for the bottom line, Bokhari said: “It’s hard to tell sometimes what’s really motivating them… but there are certainly cases where these companies have taken decisions that don’t seem to make any business sense. You can clearly see that from the case of Twitter, where they have been going after Conservative users and Trump supporters for the past few months.”
“It’s gotten so bad that high-profile conservatives like Adam Baldwin have actually quit the platform,” he explained. “So if you’ve got users with hundreds of thousands of followers quitting your platform, that doesn’t seem like a very good decision from a business standpoint.”
Asked by Bannon why he’d decided to call the tech leaders ‘plutocrats’, Bokhari replied: “It’s not just the case that they’re wealthy — they also control incredibly powerful communication platforms.”
“They’re going to use these communication platforms, which they own, to influence elections. It used to be the case that on Twitter and Facebook, you’d choose who to follow, you’d choose what you see, and which information you get from your followers,” he said. “That’s not the case anymore. Now there are algorithms and computer programs that determine what you see on Facebook, what gets pushed up to your feed, and it’s very easy for these companies these days to manipulate that process so that supporters of Donald Trump get hidden.”
Charlie Nash is a frequent contributor to Breitbart Tech and former editor of the Squid Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter @MrNashington.
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